Emily Wilkins

life-after-miscarriage-on-progesterone-and-off-my-rocker


Well, I’m a 29 year-old who was on birth control for more than a decade. My husband and I decided to discontinue the birth control in November 2009. We continued to use contraception through January and decided to pull the goalie for February’s cycle. At that point, I officially became obsessed with TTC — I was on all the popular websites and had about a dozen different calendars going. We managed to conceive in the first cycle we ‘tried.’ I work as an instructional designer for a very large specialty retailer and live in Columbus, Ohio. We have a dog named McLovin and so far, haven’t told a soul about our news except our best friends (who emptied a shot glass of tequila so I could pee in it while we were in a restaurant in Mexico just this past Saturday). And that’s the teaser I’m going to leave you with.

Posts by Emily Wilkins:

  • August 20, 2010
    Life After Miscarriage: On Progesterone and Off My Rocker

    My face looks like a war zone, my bowels are in distress, and I’m pretty sure that a nitroglycerin plant could explode just outside my bedroom and I wouldn’t notice. I have a window of about 45 minutes between taking the pill and entering into a coma.

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  • August 09, 2010
    Life After Miscarriage: Time for an intervention

    Yes, I do want to get pregnant…but how about a little “Hi, how are you? How have you been sleeping? How are your emotions?” My desire for emotional coddling was quickly overridden by the straight-forward approach though. After all, the whole reason I was at the doctor, was to find out what’s going on with my body and to figure out how to correct it as quickly as possible.

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  • August 03, 2010
    Life After Miscarriage: One Step Forward and Two Steps Back

    If I’m quiet for one moment, I slip into a daydream where I imagine myself six months pregnant or decorating a nursery. I catch myself imagining my husband rolling over in the morning and kissing my big belly, whispering to our son or daughter.

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  • July 26, 2010
    Life After Miscarriage: A Frustrating Existence

    This month, we should have been buying nursery furniture. We should have been painting the bedroom, transforming it from gift wrapping room to soft, comfortable space with a crib, and a rocking chair and tiny hangers in the closet.

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  • July 18, 2010
    Life After Miscarriage: Reminders In The Mail

    I could do without all cute reminders of what I don’t have right now: the mail reminding me to register, the coupons for Baby’s ‘R Us and Pampers, the nursery decorating tips, the phone calls from the well-pregnancy service my insurer offers…

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  • July 12, 2010
    Life After Miscarriage: Getting Ready to Try Again

    ’ll probably always wonder if I did something to cause the miscarriage. How could I not? Sure, I’ve read all the literature and I’ve heard my doctor say it too: “Most miscarriages that occur before 12 weeks are the result of a chromosomal abnormality and cannot be prevented.”

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  • July 05, 2010
    Life After Miscarriage: The First Period

    After a whopping 9.5 weeks, my period finally arrived. I haven’t been this thrilled about getting a period since I was 20 and forgot to use a back up method while I was on antibiotics.

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  • June 22, 2010
    Life After Miscarriage: Lessons Learned

    After this experience, I can distinguish between grief and suffering. Grief is what you feel when you lose something that meant a lot. Suffering is becoming a prisoner to grief. I can grieve my loss but I will not suffer from it or because of it because I deserve more.

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  • June 17, 2010
    Life After Miscarriage: Eight Weeks Not Pregnant

    So here I am, 8 weeks not-pregnant. It’s almost like a dream; something that I’m sure and certain seemed so real but there’s nothing that exists to prove it to me. I would question whether it all happened, but the empty place in my heart tells me it did.

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  • May 20, 2010
    Exhibit 100E: Female Homosapien Post-Miscarriage

    I feel a bit like I’ve become my own science experiment. Watching, waiting, observing; adding variables like vitamins and folic acid: “Let’s see what happens if I take these.” And then, subtracting other variables: “If I don’t wear a pad, and I wear white pants, will karmic forces intercede?”

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